Changes we can’t stop are coming. What can we control? — My great-grandmother was born in 1875, ninety-nine years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As a child, we would visit her house, the house my mother grew up in. It was always an adventure. We would pump the kitchen water pump to get water because there was no…

Leaving unanswered questions can destroy a great story — The TV series Lost started in 2004, back in the days before on-demand streaming. My family and I were captivated by the show. In those days, you planned your schedule around when a TV show aired so you didn’t miss it. If you missed an episode, it may be hard…

The bar for basic success is much lower than we think — Years ago I watched Hardball with Keanu Reeves and one scene has rolled around in the back of my mind ever since. I don’t remember the whole plot of the movie but he is coaching an inner-city baseball team and this is a talk he gave to his team. “I…

Wisdom from ‘The Infinite Jeff’ to help us understand today’s world. — My good friend, Will Holcomb, asked me to write an article about how I see the current world situation and the situation in America. Will wrote about me in his book series The Infinite Jeff and some readers of that series have been asking him what I would say about…

It is time for America to grow up and leave its racist past behind — I grew up in an all-white community in northern Michigan. I distinctly remember seeing my first black person who was visiting our church. I was probably about 10 years old, which would have been in the early-1970s, and I remember looking at him in wonder. In the early 1980s, one…

The research was coming out and cigarette companies were panicking. Smoking was trendy, Hollywood stars were paid to smoke a company’s brand, money was rolling in. Then the research started showing the damage cigarettes did to the body and the potential for the industry to collapse was real. The industry…

Voting on abortion or 2nd Amendment don’t actually help fix either issue — I watched the Democratic debates for their 2020 primary. There were some impressive people on stage with some great platform points. I especially liked Tulsi Gabbard, currently a Major in the Hawaii Army National Guard and served in Iraq and Kuwait. I like her stance against war. There were some…

I went through a phase and read the major dystopian novels; Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Animal Farm, etc. The great thing about fiction is, we have models of different types of worlds. Think about how deeply the concept of “Big Brother” from 1984 has permeated our culture. If…

My story of becoming a writer starts with, “I never planned on being a writer, it just happened …” That journey is fraught with insecurity because there are so many people whose life long dreams are to become writers and they worked hard to hone their craft. I had story…